No speedy trial for Hadeeds

Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed and his wife Genevieve have lost their ini­tial bid for their law­suit, al­leg­ing that they are be­ing tar­get­ed by the Gov­ern­ment based on their eth­nic­i­ty and an on­go­ing le­gal dis­pute over the ter­mi­na­tion of leas­es for State land, to be ex­pe­dit­ed.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion yes­ter­day, High Court Judge Vigel Paul dis­missed the cou­ple’s ap­pli­ca­tion, which was large­ly based on Hadeed’s health re­port­ed­ly de­te­ri­o­rat­ing while the cou­ple re­main de­tained in prison for an al­leged plot to as­sas­si­nate Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

In de­ter­min­ing the ap­pli­ca­tion for a short­en­ing of the time­lines for a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the cou­ple’s con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge, Jus­tice Paul up­held ob­jec­tions from at­tor­ney Ger­ald Ramdeen over claims made by Hadeed’s lo­cal doc­tor, Jacque­line Pereira-Sab­ga.

Jus­tice Paul agreed with Ramdeen that the cou­ple’s lawyers, led by Dou­glas Mendes, SC, failed to ap­ply to deem Pereira-Sab­ga an ex­pert wit­ness ca­pa­ble of pro­vid­ing ev­i­dence on Hadeed’s nu­mer­ous med­ical con­di­tions, his re­quired treat­ment and the po­ten­tial ef­fect of his con­tin­ued de­ten­tion on his health.

Jus­tice Paul said: “Noth­ing pre­vent­ed them from mak­ing a com­pos­ite ap­pli­ca­tion. Such would have placed both mat­ters be­fore the court and avoid de­lay.”

He al­so con­sid­ered the fact that High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad de­cid­ed against or­der­ing the cou­ple’s re­lease pend­ing the de­ter­mi­na­tion of their sub­stan­tive case.

In mak­ing his de­ci­sion last week, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad agreed to trans­fer the case, which was sub­se­quent­ly as­signed to Jus­tice Paul.

Jus­tice Paul yes­ter­day not­ed that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad’s rul­ing is be­ing ap­pealed.

“It would not be ap­pro­pri­ate for this court to form a view over some­thing now be­fore the Court of Ap­peal,” Jus­tice Paul said.

“There must be a suf­fi­cient ba­sis for ex­cep­tion­al treat­ment. I am not sat­is­fied that the case for ur­gent di­rec­tions has been made out,” he added.

Dressed in a T-shirt, a gaunt-look­ing Hadeed sat silent­ly dur­ing the over five-hour hear­ing, which he par­tic­i­pat­ed in via video con­fer­enc­ing from the Gold­en Grove State Prison in Arou­ca.

Af­ter the de­ci­sion was de­liv­ered, Mendes called up­on Jus­tice Paul to ad­journ the is­sue un­til to­day to al­low him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to make the ex­pert ev­i­dence ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Jus­tice is not done by tak­ing these tech­ni­cal points. You must main­tain the ac­cess to this court so an ap­pli­ca­tion that could po­ten­tial­ly save his life could be made,” Mendes said.

Jus­tice Paul in­di­cat­ed that Mendes was free to file the ap­pli­ca­tion but not­ed his de­ci­sion on the ur­gent hear­ing of the case was based on sev­er­al oth­er fac­tors.

Mendes then ac­cused Ramdeen of seek­ing to de­lay the de­ter­mi­na­tion of the case to pre­vent the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his clients be­ing re­leased be­fore the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency ends in Sep­tem­ber.

“The State is us­ing the rules against my clients to keep them in de­ten­tion. You (Jus­tice Paul) have to con­front it. He (Ramdeen) is re­sist­ing be­cause he is run­ning down the clock,” Mendes said.

Ramdeen re­peat­ed­ly de­nied any wrong­do­ing, sug­gest­ing he was be­ing blamed for pro­vid­ing com­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion to Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

“Mr Do­minic Hadeed finds him­self in the po­si­tion he finds him­self in is sole­ly be­cause of his lawyers,” Ramdeen said.

How­ev­er, Ramdeen agreed to the case man­age­ment con­fer­ence be­ing set for next Fri­day. He al­so promised to file ap­pli­ca­tions for some of the claims made by the cou­ple in their case to be struck out.

The Hadeeds and rel­a­tive Star Sab­ga, 69, were de­tained over two weeks ago af­ter po­lice of­fi­cers ex­e­cut­ed search war­rants at their homes and busi­ness in Tacarigua.

The war­rants in­di­cat­ed they were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der.

Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders (PDOs) sub­se­quent­ly is­sued by Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der stat­ed they were be­ing de­tained over an al­leged plot to mur­der Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials and MPs. The probe al­leged­ly stemmed from in­tel­li­gence gath­ered by a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty or­gan­i­sa­tion that was not iden­ti­fied in the PDOs.

Jus­tice Seep­er­sad re­fused their in­ter­im re­lease but grant­ed them leave to pur­sue a sub­stan­tive case.

Al­though he ac­knowl­edged the con­di­tions the cou­ple have had to and con­tin­ues to en­dure in prison, Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said they could be com­pen­sat­ed through dam­ages if they are even­tu­al­ly suc­cess­ful in their le­gal chal­lenge.

“While the court ap­pre­ci­ates the dis­tress from de­ten­tion, it does hold the view that there may be greater harm if they are re­leased and the in­tel­li­gence up­on which the po­lice and min­is­ter act­ed proves to be true,” Jus­tice Seep­er­sad said.

The cou­ple have filed an ap­peal claim­ing that Jus­tice Seep­er­sad made over a dozen er­rors in his de­ci­sion.

In the sub­stan­tive case, the cou­ple’s lawyers not on­ly chal­lenged their de­ten­tions based on PDOs un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions (EPR) for the SoE.

They al­so claimed the move by the cur­rent Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the SoE last month was un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, as it sought to tar­get mem­bers of the Syr­i­an/Lebanese com­mu­ni­ty, a mi­nor­i­ty eth­nic group, and Hadeed per­son­al­ly.

They ex­ten­sive­ly quot­ed state­ments made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie dur­ing the SoE ex­ten­sion de­bate in Par­lia­ment, in which he re­peat­ed­ly de­scribed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty as “the one per cent” and ac­cused them of be­ing fi­nanciers of the now-Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) and of steal­ing state land.

They sug­gest­ed that Je­re­mie was re­fer­ring di­rect­ly to Do­minic Hadeed, as the al­le­ga­tion arose af­ter he pub­licly crit­i­cised Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy in March and af­ter the Cab­i­net sought to uni­lat­er­al­ly ter­mi­nate leas­es to State land held by his Blue Wa­ters com­pa­ny in May.

They ref­er­enced a let­ter sent to Hadeed by Je­re­mie’s of­fice, in­di­cat­ing that the po­lice were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the is­sue of the grant­i­ng of the leas­es.

They point­ed out that the cou­ple and their rel­a­tive were on­ly ar­rest­ed based on “in­tel­li­gence” pur­port­ed­ly gath­ered by the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) through in­ter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions, a day af­ter Hadeed threat­ened le­gal ac­tion over the ter­mi­nat­ed leas­es.

Stat­ing that their de­ten­tions were un­rea­son­able and taint­ed by bad faith, their lawyers point­ed out that the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) could have used less dra­con­ian meth­ods to in­ves­ti­gate them if there was any cred­i­ble ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, which they firm­ly de­nied.

“There is no and can be no ev­i­dence of any plot by the claimants to mur­der any per­son be­cause there was no such plot. There is no ba­sis for con­clud­ing that there was any ev­i­dence of any threat, re­al or per­ceived, against any pub­lic of­fi­cial,” they said.

Through the law­suit, the Hadeeds are seek­ing a se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions, in­clud­ing on the le­gal­i­ty of the SoE ex­ten­sion and their de­ten­tions un­der PDOs. They are al­so claim­ing that over a dozen of their con­sti­tu­tion­al rights were breached by the al­leged ac­tions of the TTPS and the Gov­ern­ment and are seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion.

The Hadeeds are al­so be­ing rep­re­sent­ed by Gilbert Pe­ter­son, SC, Rishi Dass, SC, Faris Al-Rawi, SC, Chase Pe­gus and Car­lon Mc Leod.

The AG’s Of­fice has re­tained British King’s Coun­sels Sir James Ead­ie and Robert Strang to rep­re­sent the State along­side at­tor­ney Ramdeen and Dayadai Har­ri­paul.